


i am a house with no windows

by badbrains



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV Derek, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29855322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badbrains/pseuds/badbrains
Summary: Neither of them are ready for something like this. They aren’t. Derek will probably never have what he is supposed to be able to give, will never possess the kind words and gentle touches. Stiles will never have the decency to stop, to relent where he resists, to speak soft where his words are sharp. Maybe that’s okay. For Derek, things like this have never been what he expected. He can never have love - uninterrupted, unadulterated. Maybe no such thing exists.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	i am a house with no windows

**Author's Note:**

> so my birthday is tomorrow (i will be nineteen !! which is basically dead in gay years *sigh*) so i decided to treat myself by writing - you guessed it - _more_ angst. i am always on my bullshit. are any of us surprised ??? nope. not in the slightest, i'm sure. 
> 
> all of my ficlets and stuff are basically just centered around the nogitsune. but i am NOT sorry. 3b is the best season and i have so many Feelings about post-nogitsune stiles and his trauma related to that. i will probably never run out of things i wanna write on it. so just. LET ME HAVE MY OBSESSION it is my bday goddammit DJAHSFJDDSJH
> 
> anyway, thank you to em for helping me figure out what i wanted to write. you should check [her](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceprincessem) out as well because she writes some great great things and she wrote me an amazing fic for my bday (and has gifted me other wonderful pieces) so give her a looksie if you do not mind because she deserves it <3
> 
> no beta + title is inspired by flatsound's _you were a home that i wanted to grow up in_

Derek knows what grief looks like. 

He wore it for a while. Still slips it on, on occasion, just to make sure it still fits. When it doesn’t, he tailors it. He will for the rest of his life. It decorated him in the form of sunken eyes, slumped shoulders, the way he couldn’t bring himself to call anywhere _home._ He never really had to hide it because he _became_ it. Derek Hale wasn’t a person, he wasn’t a being with his own autonomy and a central nervous system and a heart that had been cracked so frequently that it beat in shards. He wasn’t a man, he was a fire. 

So, when the pack is at the loft, three couch cushions so glaringly vacant that there may as well be a flashing sign, he takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders. It still fits. He allows his eyes to slip to Stiles, because one thing he has had to learn over the years is that losing someone exists outside of yourself. He had to learn it in New York, he lost his family, but so did Laura. He lost his family, but so did Beacon Hills. He lost them, and the world did, too. 

The pack lost their friends, but Stiles lost them first. 

Derek watches him. Tracks how his mouth twists when he laughs, how he smiles and claps Scott on the shoulder, how he makes funny faces at Lydia until she rolls her eyes. He also sees how Stiles wilts when they look away, how his eyes go dull and unfocused when the attention is elsewhere. He sees how Stiles smoke-and-mirrors recovery, how he turns healing into an illusion, and it makes him angry. 

Stiles cannot look in the mirror. One day, Derek hears him rustling around in the bathroom, the rest of the pack laughing loud in the living room, watching old movies and making fun of the poor acting. Derek remembers thinking someone was missing, which is how he found the door cracked slightly, allowing him to see that Stiles had the medicine cabinet open while he washed his hands, the mirror facing the door so Derek only saw himself looking in. 

He keeps his eyes down when he passes the mirror on the wall by the front door or just avoids it entirely. He keeps his phone at full brightness, only locks it when it’s face-down. He keeps the curtains in his home pulled shut, turning everything so dark and cold. 

Derek understands that on a level that is more intimate than he is willing to admit aloud. He remembers how he couldn’t look in a mirror for the first few months after, how he didn’t want to see himself. Because what if he saw a killer. But, it ran deeper than that. It was easy to use selfish reasons to disguise his own blistering self hatred. It was easy to say that he didn’t want to look at his reflection because what if he saw everything Kate said he was. Really, it was _what if I look into the mirror and I see them?_ What if he looked into the mirror and he saw his mother’s dark hair, the shape of her smile, the way his nose points just like his dad’s, the way his eyes match Laura’s. He couldn’t lose the only thing he had left. 

He would have done anything, then, to turn the beam of loathing away from himself, to aim it outward until he couldn’t feel it anymore. Until it cost him everything. 

But, Stiles is not supposed to cower down, he isn’t supposed to tuck his tail between his legs and just _accept_ it. If any of them had proven time and time again that they would fight incessantly until they met their death, that they would defend what mattered until it weathered them down into nothing, it was Stiles. Perhaps the most fearless of them all. Something like this wasn't supposed to incapacitate him. Something like this wasn’t supposed to kill him, leaving a husk behind that knew how to laugh and smile like it was taught to do eight years ago when he spent more time in a hospital room than at home. When the house smelled like whiskey more than it ever did of her perfume. Something like this wasn’t supposed to turn him into Derek. That’s the part that burns the most, he thinks. Makes him the fire.

Because if something kills Stiles, it kills them all. 

So, he waits. He waits until the pack filters out, watches Stiles’ lips tug up in a carefully collected version of _okay,_ watches Scott mimic it sincerely and slip through the door like he hasn’t known Stiles his entire life. He knows, though, that the pack is too afraid to push. Too afraid that Stiles will register it as a shove. The ground is coated in eggshells and none of them can walk. He waits until it is just him and Stiles. The fire and the ashes. 

When Stiles sees that it is just them - all alone, no pack, no mirrors - his lips warp into a scowl, twist down and turn mean. Derek is more familiar with that, he knows anger more than he knows defeat. Then again, the two have always been intertwined for him, haven’t they?

He doesn’t care to offer meaningless platitudes, he knows that they don’t work. He isn’t happy-go-lucky like Scott, so blinded by being good that he doesn’t let anyone else be bad. He and Stiles are the same. He knows what he needed to hear, then, when it was him struggling to pick up the pieces. When he was the killer. 

Stiles stands across from him, hard lines and potent grief, so Derek just says, “I killed my family.” He hears Stiles’ breath catch, but he needs to say it before he loses the courage, before there is no chance to save him. “I sold them out for fifteen seconds of feeling desired. They paid the price for what it cost me to be wanted.”

He sighs. “I didn’t start the fire. But, for years, I—” he has never told anyone this. There has never been someone so close to becoming him that he felt like he could, that he felt like he needed to. “For years, I let their memory coincide with Kate’s. That is how I killed them. I didn’t set them aflame, but I made sure their remnants were shrouded in ash. Sometimes, I think that is worse.”

Stiles looks unhappy. Derek knows that isn’t what he wanted to hear. But, usually, when it hurts, it means it’s what you needed. 

“Stiles, look at me.” He does, reluctantly drags tired eyes up from the floor, fixing Derek with his sunken gaze. Derek can see it. He knows what grief looks like. “I know it fucking sucks, and you could tell yourself this for years and not ever believe it, but you did not kill them. I know that, in your head, it isn’t so binary, but you didn’t. We all know that. I promise you, we do.” Stiles takes a long, watery inhale that Derek hears get caught within his chest. “But, for as long as you don’t, you are killing them.” 

Stiles’ face crumples at that. He rubs the back of his hand across his nose, hard, blinking against the tears that clump up his eyelashes, make them spike long and dark. “I can’t see anything else,” Stiles confesses shakily. “I don’t even feel like I exist, I don’t want to feel better because I just keep waiting to wake up and—” he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, his lips pressed into a quivering line while he breathes. “I just don’t want to work so hard and find out it wasn’t real,” he whispers into the space between his wrists. 

“No one is upset with you for healing, Stiles.”

“I am. _I_ am upset with me.”

Derek frowns at that. But, he knows how Stiles feels. Derek has never really stopped being angry with himself. 

“That’s the easy part,” Derek tells him sincerely. “The easiest part is blaming yourself. The most selfish pieces of grief come without a price. You can’t honor them by hating yourself, Stiles. You are going to wither away like that. Trust me.”

“Maybe that’s what I am going for.”

“Then that would mean they died for nothing. Is that what you want? To render their lives useless to fit your narrative? You are _wasting away,_ you think engraving another tombstone is what it’ll take to make us happy?”

“I don’t know what would make you guys happy!” he explodes, pulling his hands from his eyes. “I sit here, I come to pack meetings and stand side by side with all the people who watched me murder their friends, Derek. They _did_ die for nothing _._ I killed them for _no reason._ ”

“So, what, then? You think it is what you deserve? To suffer?”

“You want me to be honest, Derek? I think that is better than what I deserve.”

He scrubs a hand down his face. He needs a different tactic. Instead, he chooses to try for levity. Stiles needs an even playing field. “It is okay to hurt. I am not trying to—” he almost says _demonize_ , feels his throat click with how he stops himself, “vilify you. Or make you feel like it is not alright to need time. It’s just—” _I don’t want you to become me, I don’t want you to hate yourself in a decade for what you are doing right now, I don’t want your memories to be marred with regret, to what-if yourself into emotional stagnation, “_ I don’t want you to wish things were different.”

“I will wish things were different for the rest of my life.”

Derek will, too. Who is he kidding? He just says, “I know.” He breathes and Stiles breathes and he says again, quieter. “I know.”

His hands itch to reach for Stiles. He doesn’t know what he would intend to do - push him away, pull him closer, shake him by the shoulders and beg him to get better before they all get worse. But, he wants to do _something._

It’s Stiles who takes a step closer. He inhales shakily and insinuates himself within Derek’s space. This is what they do, he thinks. They tell each other the things it hurts to hear, but at the end of the day, they know it is for the best. Because if they won’t tell each other, who will?

Stiles looks down, splays his fingers out and Derek gives him a moment. Allows the silence to curl around him. He is letting Stiles count. 

When Stiles looks up, Derek whispers, “Ten?”

Stiles nods and purses his lips. His nostrils flare on an inhale and he closes his eyes. “I can’t look at my reflection.”

“I know.”

“I am so scared that it won’t be me. What if I look and it isn’t me?”

Derek reaches out, wraps a hand around Stiles’ forearm. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. 

“I hate looking in the mirror.”

When they lock eyes, Derek uses his hold to draw Stiles closer, gentle enough that he doesn’t have to move if he doesn’t want to. “You’re looking into one right now.”

The way they fall into each other is natural, unprompted. Stiles still smells like he is five seconds from running and never looking back. Derek has never stopped feeling like that, either. His face feels warm beneath the cradle of Derek’s palms, his tongue molten where he licks into Derek’s mouth, lips scorching. Derek knows that, too. He is the fire. Derek has always imagined Stiles to taste how he smells, like the warm water from a kinked, sun-soaked water hose. The slick coating on colorful candy. The way the air feels heavy before it rains. Instead he tastes like oranges, like sunflower seeds before you spit them through the crack in your car window, the spray from a sprinkler that slips in droplets between your lips when you are a kid. All of it tainted by the sour grit of sadness. Derek still wishes he could bottle it, knows that it will stain the back of his tongue hot and bitter for a long, long time. That’s okay. It reminds him that it still fits. The grief. 

Stiles pulls him closer, or maybe Derek presses inward, molding around him, needing more. Always needing more. This is a first but also a last. The last time he will know Stiles as just Stiles. Then again, Stiles has never really been _just Stiles,_ has he?

They pull away. Or maybe they don’t pull away so much as kissing becomes breathing into each other’s mouth becomes looking into each other’s eyes before stepping back. Becomes Derek clearing his throat and Stiles rubbing his hand along the back of his neck and neither of them looking at each other but their eyes not being drawn anywhere else. 

Neither of them are ready for something like this. They aren’t. Derek will probably never have what he is supposed to be able to give, will never possess the kind words and gentle touches. Stiles will never have the decency to stop, to relent where he resists, to speak soft where his words are sharp. Maybe that’s okay. For Derek, things like this have never been what he expected. He can never have love - uninterrupted, unadulterated. Maybe no such thing exists.

If it did, though, Stiles would create it. That is the only thing that keeps him from pausing, keeps him from spiraling. 

Stiles says, “We are a lot alike, you know.” He does know. But, he doesn’t think it is a good thing. Cannot think of one thing to redeem that.

Stiles continues, “I think that might mean something. The fact that I - sometimes I listen to you breathe. Or I wish that I could feel your heart, to make sure it is real, that I’m real, that—” he cuts himself off with a quick, sharp laugh. “Or maybe it means nothing. But I would like it to. Mean something, that is. If that’s okay.”

It’s not okay, really. It is dangerous. But, dangerous _is_ their okay. This is their life. Probably the rest of their life. This is not the first time they are going to have to have this talk, Derek can feel it. But, that means there is a future. There is hope, which is no common currency. Not here. Not anymore. 

He tugs Stiles’ hand by the wrist, rests it where his heart is hammering in his chest. He lets him feel it, and Derek can feel the pulse where his fingertips are pressed into the veined flesh beneath Stiles’ palm. They sit like that for a minute and Derek takes a moment to tailor it. 

It still fits. It always fits.   
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hehe (:


End file.
